


Following in the Footsteps of Demons

by ashkatom



Series: 100 Post Ficathon [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contains three coffee dates, two gutted lowbloods, and one instance of rock-climbing. Also features several bad decisions that didn't work out too badly and a few that did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Following in the Footsteps of Demons

She visits you early in the evening, as the last rays of sunlight die. It’s always when she visits, a shock of power placing her square in the middle of your chambers.

You’ve learned to leave that spot empty for her on every equinox. You’ve learned to be here, awake at five in the evening with your blackout curtains in place. You order two cups of coffee from the kitchens, and the servants never question you. Your guards never presume to ask how your company joins you. These days are shrouded in mystery, and you will keep it that way.

She always drinks the coffee. Over time, you’ve learned exactly how she likes it, no milk but plenty of sugar. You didn’t become Empress through blindness.

What happens after the coffee is always different. 

Last equinox, she spent hours combing your hair with her fingers, weaving it into a thousand tiny plaits, then plaiting those together, and so on until your hair was all bound back. It behaved for her, when you can barely get it to respond to you, and you heard her talking to it in the hissing language of the woegothics.

Thankfully, it didn’t talk back.

The equinox before that, she took you for a walk through the poorest district in the city surrounding your empire. It was full of rustbloods through to yellowbloods, and you realise uncomfortably that from her stature and her psionic gifts, she must be low on the haemospectrum.

All the trolls retreated from the pair of you as you walked the streets, no guards in sight. You don’t need them. You are the Condesce, and you walk with a figure of legend. Fear is how you have always ruled. It has proven more effective than pity.

One of them spat in your path and you disembowelled him as a warning. Handmaid laid a hand on his forehead and closed her eyes. She refused to move until his last breath passed his lips.

There was brown blood all over your shoes when you returned to the palace. They were incinerated.

This equinox, she drinks the coffee, then dashes the cup to pieces on the floor. You look at her steadily and sip from your own cup. Questioning the Handmaid has never gotten you anywhere. It’s always been easiest to let her come to you.

“Things are changing,” she says, finally, in the abrupt way she always speaks. “Things are breaking.”

You set your cup down on a side table, the porcelain clicking against glass. “Whale, I seappose as long as my crockery is following a trend,” you say, drawling out the Es in your affected Imperial accent. 

“Come if you’re coming.” She flings open your window and jumps out of your eighth-story rooms.

You follow her without a thought.

\--

“The objective is to sneak out,” she tells you as you hide behind a wall. The guard shift will change soon, and her eyes are closed as if she’s keeping track of something in her head. “No pulling rank.”

You ‘hmph!’ at that. You have no need to pull rank. This land is yours, this hive is your own, the one they built you to replace the tiny, colourful thing you had under the ocean when you were a girl and your only responsibility was feeding Gl’bgolyb. You know every inch of this place as well as you know every prophecy your lusus ever whispered.

You walk into the gardens a short way, away from the wall and the changing shift of guards. Handmaid follows you, her face impassive. With the pulling of a few hidden triggers, an underground passageway opens and you descend into the dark without fear.

“Come if you’re coming,” you say, off-handedly. 

\--

She leads you a long way, this time. While you’ve seen her teleport before, she seems happy to walk for half the night, out of your city and into the wilderness. 

When you come to a sheer bluff, she climbs straight up it, digging her fingers into the rock and finding precarious footholds.

You look at her, at least your height above you in the air. “Some of us aren’t psionics, Handmaid. Are you trying to rush me to an early death?”

She ignores you and keeps climbing.

You sigh, strap your 2x3dent across your back, and follow her.

The rock is harsh, and it bites into your fingers and chips your nails. You’ll have to get false ones put on before tomorrow. Appearances are important. Your bodysuit, flawless before this exercise, gets scuffed, frayed, and even ripped. Your shoes are entirely insufficient for the task of climbing this cliff face. Your hair is dragging you down, your muscles are burning, your fingertips feel numb, and you’re going to have tyrian bruises blooming on your hips and knees tomorrow. You’re climbing straight up without safety ropes, and you don’t think Handmaid would catch you were you to fall.

You’ve never felt so alive.

\--

You make it up not long after Handmaid, mostly thanks to your height allowing you better handholds. Your final scramble over the edge of the cliff is undignified, and Handmaid grips your arm to help you up.

It’s the first time you’ve been touched in a sweep.

She conjures a bowl of water from somewhere in a flash of green light and washes your hands. Grit and tyrian blood stain the water, and you hiss as she presses down on the pads of your fingers to make sure all the wounds are clean. 

“What do you see?” she asks.

You look around. The wilderness around you is untamed, although it will eventually have to be clearcut to deal with the growing population the drones are overseeing. You can still see your palace in the distance, surrounded by a blur of a city.

“This forest. My palace.” You flick the excess water off your hands and inspect the wounds. Not bad, although the climb down won’t be much fun.

“In six sweeps, this forest will be a city. The expansion will drive three species to extinction and another fourteen to rarity.” Handmaid folds her hands in her lap. They’re unscarred, although she has no calluses that would protect her from scratches and blistering. She’s an anomaly in so many ways. “In another six, the city will be mostly abandoned. Pupae will live here, and the plants will grow through buildings and collapse them. Of the fourteen rare species, twelve will be flourishing again.”

Your mouth draws into a thin line. “What happens in six sweeps?”

“It’s already happening.” Handmaid spreads her hands, and a pale window in the air appears in front of you. A blurry picture of a troll, just post-pupation, with shocking red eyes, surrounded by trolls that appear to be allies shows through. “Revolution.”

You cut a hand through the window. “I have dealt with revolutions before.”

“Oh,” says Handmaid, and cups your face tenderly. “You foolish girl.”

You are thirty-six sweeps old, and this is the first time Handmaid has kissed you.

\--

You still lay out two cups every equinox, in case the death of a season calls Handmaid to your side. You have just executed the Sufferer, titled post-mortem as a final insult, and you are reclining in your palace. Your army is chasing down any followers left of the strange, tiny mutant.

She has not visited you since she warned you of him.

She visits you today.

She drinks her coffee sitting on the floor, leaning against your legs. There are tired lines on her face that weren’t there all those sweeps ago, and she looks how you feel. It is difficult running an empire, and these equinoxes are the only breaks you allow yourself.

“I will be dying soon,” she says, with her customary lack of exclamation. “I’ve found you.”

“Is this the last time you have visited me?” You put your cup down, to hide a sudden shake in your hands. Composure is important. 

Reluctantly, she says, “Yes.”

You run your fingers through the long tails of her hair. Your claws catch on the strands. “Look at me. What do you see?”

She twists to look up at you, seriously, her even breathing her only movements. Her strange, pupilless eyes take you in, head to toe. You shine, today, all of your piercings polished, your bracelets wiped down. You’re enough to blind anyone, and the fires of Sufferer’s torture shone bright against you. Impressions are important.

“An Empress ready to become an Emissary,” she tells you, her voice quiet. “You will be leaving soon?”

You incline your head. “The journey is planned. I’ve found a Helmsman. I only need crush the remnants of Sufferer’s church and then I can leave.” You sigh and let your head loll back, letting everything important escape you. “I am more than ready.”

“Space is my domain.” She lets her hands crackle with green light, and rests them against your legs. Something passes into you, something that leaves you feeling content and languorous. As if this equinox has lasted a lifetime. It may have to. “I give you my blessing, Your Imperial Condescension.”

“You’re making fun of my position,” you accuse.

She quirks her lips up into a brief smile, a reaction you’ve only seen twice before. “You will require the blessing. The world will end while you’re gone.”

You reach out and take her hand. It is the first time you have touched anyone in six sweeps. “What use is a world without someone to fight it with?”

She squeezes your hand gently. “What use is a world when you’ve already won?”

\--

You face her down, trident at her throat, needlewands at yours.

“What use is a life without someone to live it with?” you ask, numbly.

She looks at you, calm as ever. She’s old now, you can tell, far older than any lowblood should ever be. Out here, on the edges of where the universe ends, it’s easier to sense her for the anomaly she is. “What use is a life that you’ve already lived?”

You blink back tears, imperious and composed even now. She will kill you if you don’t kill her, this you know. And it will ruin every plan she’s ever made. “What have you seen?”

She shifts against the tines of your 2x3dent. The points prick her throat, and you see her blood is rust-red, so low she couldn’t get any lower. It is the first time you have ever seen her injured, and it is by your hand. “Enough.”

You ready your grip on the 2x3dent, but she gently reaches back to grab it just below the fork at her neck and guides it to just under her ribs instead. It will be a slow, painful death.

She winks at you. It is the first and probably the only time you will ever see her make a completely unsubtle expression. “It’s not the end of the universe yet,” she says. “I have things to do.”

You stab. She disappears before the drops of blood on your 2x3dent even have a chance to hit the ground.

\--

He comes for you not long after, and you realise that your planning has only just begun.


End file.
